Death in a Dry River: Black Life, White Property, Parched Justice

In the court’s judgment, ‘an embarrassment of reasons and fine discriminations explains the killing of Kumantaye Ryder: the attackers were drunk or they were not; they were hooning or ‘lairising’; they didn’t mean to harass ‘anyone’ – although, as the judgement also acknowledges, they did harass Aboriginal people by driving into the sleepers on the river bed. Finally, although their targets were Aboriginal people, the offenders were not actually racist. Rather, their ‘normal attitudes and standards of behaviour were pushed into the background’ (2010: 14).